PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Rhode Island families with mixed immigration status are under more stress than other immigrant families, but still build families that are as strong as others, according to a study scheduled to be made public Monday by the Latino Policy Institute at Roger Williams University.

"Mixed-status families do face some unique challenges," said Kalina M. Brabeck, the Rhode Island College professor who led the two-year study. Mixed-status families are those where one or more parents are unauthorized immigrants and one or more children are natural-born citizens of the United States.

Such families face difficulty getting and keeping jobs, food scarcity, discrimination and fear of deportation, Brabeck told The Providence Journal on Friday in a preview of her findings. Such families generally faced added stress before they left their original countries, while they were migrating and after they arrived here.

Yet, on measures of family strength, such as levels of parent-child communication, mixed-status families fared as well as those whose immigration was authorized.

Part of that may owe to their Latino heritage and the strong emphasis the Latino community places on the importance of family.

Families in the study migrated mostly from the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Central America, primarily Guatemala. The families were recruited principally from Providence, Pawtucket and Central Falls, where researchers had access to public school students, in both charter and traditional schools. The families had to have a U.S.-born child between the ages of 7 and 10. A total of 179 families participated, with 49 percent of them having mixed immigration status.

Besides the Latino emphasis on family, Brabeck said the families she studied also benefited from the resilience needed to leave your country of birth and set up life elsewhere. "You have to be able to overcome some significant obstacles to get here," she said. "You're talking about a group of people that have pretty amazing coping skills."

Still, even the children born here as citizens have struggled. They have scored lower in math reading and spelling. They report higher levels of anxiety. They have higher incidence of dental problems and lack health-care insurance, Brabeck said, even when they may be entitled to government insurance programs open to citizens. Often they are blocked from obtaining insurance by their parents' fear of being discovered as unauthorized immigrants if they fill out government forms, or from their parents being uninformed or misinformed about what help is available and what information has to be given to qualify.

Brabeck said that less than 2 percent of the unauthorized parents in the study receive Social Security income, unemployment benefits or welfare. "Nobody said they come here for the free programs," she said. "They simply don't qualify for much." Almost all government programs based on financial need excluded unauthorized immigrants, she said.

Fifty-four percent of all the immigrants in the study and 59 percent of the unauthorized said they came to the United States to work and have a better life, Brabeck said.

One immigrant told researchers in Spanish, "Don't give us food stamps. I want to be able to work."

Some of the findings:

— Three-quarters of the immigrant families were two-parent families, with 50 percent of them married.

— Ninety percent of the children in mixed-status families expect to earn at least a bachelor's degree, even though 88 percent of the parents reported having not gone to college.

"Kids had very high expectations for themselves and aspirations," said Brabeck.

The findings are scheduled to be formally presented at 9 a.m. Monday at the Rhode Island Foundation with a panel discussion to follow.